Blog

Tag: Making the most of resources

With Easter fast approaching we’ve come up with some suggestions on how you can support the University in reducing energy consumption whilst the University is closed.

Offices:

Where possible, turn off and unplug all IT and office equipment which can be shut down over Easter including computers, monitors, speakers and televisions, as well as chargers and sockets. Please also ensure appliances are not left on standby.

Top tip: If lighting is regularly left on in communal areas let us know by emailing sustainability@leeds.ac.uk. If it is suitable we may be able to add automatic sensors, therefore solving the problem.

Labs:

Where you are able to, please turn off shared and personal equipment, including ovens, gas chromatographs, hotplates, autoclaves, shakers and centrifuges.

Turn off fume cupboards where it is safe to do so. If you need to store volatile chemicals, try to consolidate them in a single cupboard and turn the rest off. Keep sashes down as far as possible.

We understand that some equipment is required to maintain safety or is being used for research purposes and therefore needs to remain on.

Top tip: If you have inefficient equipment that can be replaced to deliver significant energy savings we may be able to help. Please contact sustainability@leeds.ac.uk with any suggestions.

As part of the School of Healthcare’s Green Impact Silver Award, the team conducted a staff survey to help understand the attitudes and views on sustainability within the department. This would also provide a baseline of information with which to work with in future years. The questions focused around attitudes, barriers and recommendations and 43 responses were received (which was almost 20% of School staff). As the staff play an important role in meeting sustainability targets, it is beneficial to make sure that they are involved in the decision making process in an attempt to making any initiatives as successful as possible.

Overall, the survey was well received and provided a wide range of comments that will be useful for the department when deciding and implementing new sustainability initiatives. The results suggested that staff who answered this survey see sustainability as important and necessary; with most defining it as minimising use of resources, protecting the environment and thinking long term. When asked how they believed they contributed to sustainability at work, the two most common responses were associated with recycling and printing, indicating a focus could be put on other areas.

Staff felt the department could be doing more to be sustainable, and provided an interesting range of recommendations on how to do this, including light usage reminders, collecting food waste in kitchens, encouraging more remote working, better communications and changing some working practices and attitudes.

The recommendations on how the School could be more sustainable also seem to be linked to the barriers that are perceived – primarily, school processes, working practices and attitudes, time, lack of communication and issues with facilities.

The most cited barrier that stops staff from being sustainable was time, with many responses stating they are too busy to think about how they can improve their actions. The results showed that the best way to encourage the staff to be more sustainable is to demonstrate the positive impact they are having by taking these alternative actions. The survey also showed that 70% of the respondents were aware of the department’s Food Bank partnership, showing there is potential for improved communication as it is a scheme the department has really tried to push. Email was by far the most preferred method of notification about what the department is doing in relation to sustainability.

The information gained showed there was a definite interest in sustainability within the department, with people wanting to be able to do more. The results will influence our continuing work within the School and will also be a useful tool to compare year on year progress and receive continuous feedback.

An evening of informal interdisciplinary discussion about Fairtrade and its impact in the world. The fairness of Fairtrade will be examined from legal, economist and theological/philosophical perspectives, focusing on its impact in the Global South and the West. In light of International Women’s Day (8th of March), emphasis will be placed on Fairtrade’s impact on the lives of women.

This event is free and open to all. To register please follow the link HERE

We are pleased to announce that the University of Leeds are now officially a City Connect Silver Accredited Bike Friendly Business!

Here is some of the judges feedback following our application:

“Well done on achieving Silver accreditation on your first assessment. It’s clear that University of Leeds takes cycling seriously and that you are committed to the continued promotion of cycling to your staff and visitors alike.” City Connect, Bike Friendly Business Team.

So what is Bike Friendly Business Accreditation?

“Currently, the majority of commuter journeys across our region are made by car, whilst only 1.5% of commuter journeys are made by bike. We have a congested, overburdened road network and this contributes to some of the country’s poorest air quality, with local drivers spending on average one day a year sitting in traffic. CityConnect’s Bike Friendly Business accreditation scheme, which complements the new Cycle Superhighway constructed between Bradford and Leeds, aims to help address this and offers support to local organisations who want to encourage more and more people to travel to their premises by bike, and also recognises the efforts of those who are already doing lots of things for people on bikes.” City Connect

How did the University of Leeds perform?

The University of Leeds applied to the CityConnect Bike Friendly Business scheme in order to have some external assessment carried out on all aspects of cycling in the University workplace in order to see what we were doing well and also where we could improve. The University were assessed facilities such as cycle parking, availability of cycle to work scheme and the wider support offered for staff such as availability of bike maintenance facilities and route planning advice, through an application form and a site visit. The assessment from City Connect took into consideration things such as the size of the organisation and other factors which may affect organisational ability to implement certain aspects of their recommendations for improvement as part of the accreditation.

We were the highest scoring bike friendly business in the West Yorkshire region due to things like our campus bike hub, excellent bike parking facilities, cycle to work scheme, staff access to hire bikes and dedicated contacts for cycling in Sustainability Service. We were only 8 marks from being the first gold accredited regional business so we are now going to look at the areas which were highlighted for improvement such as availability of cycle training and more lockable bike parking to aim for Gold next year!

As part of this accreditation the University are now able to apply for a small grant, offered to help us create a further improved environment to encourage staff and visitors to cycle to campus. We are exploring the possibility of applying for more electric bikes for hire from the bike hub as part of this available grant funding. Watch this space!

Great Food at Leeds is proud to support our local suppliers. We always try to use local suppliers wherever possible, and we’ve been working with Bradford-based crisp suppliers Seabrooks since 2009. Great Food at Leeds recently catered for the University of Leeds Sustainability Awards, where all food provided was vegetarian and locally sourced. Space is provided by the University in the Sustainable Garden for community, staff and student food growing.

The University uses local food on University menus and has campus to kitchen food projects, including planters outside of the Student Union containing herbs which are used in the Great Food at Leeds kitchens. Locally sourced produce is also used at the Annual Sustainability Awards. See the link below for further details. An example food map can be found here.

At the University of Leeds we are committed to embedding sustainability across the whole institution, integrating it with our approach to student education, research, and operational services. We recognise the value of laboratory spaces as being cradles of innovation, with Leeds offering world class facilities for research to thrive. However, labs are often attributed to high energy and water consumptions as well as hazardous and non-hazardous waste generation compared to other sites across the University.

We are working with operational and academic partners to improve sustainability practises across all laboratories, in turn creating safer working environments, increased operational efficiency, and research opportunities. Spread across campus and St James University Hospital, there are over 540 teaching and research laboratories at the University of Leeds. Collectively across labs there are opportunities to have an overarching positive impact on the environment, economy and society.

Birdwatch 2018
On the 26th January 2018 we held our seventh annual ‘Big Campus Bird Watch’. Thanks to all staff and students who came out to help us identify the bird species on campus and help us with our biodiversity work.

Completing the SurveyYou can do the survey in any area of campus you like. If you have the time and enthusiasm, you are more than welcome to submit multiple forms for different areas of campus! You can complete the survey in a variety of ways. We would encourage electronic reporting wherever possible and have set up an electronic form that you can find by clicking here. Alternatively, you can download a copy of the form, along with a guidance sheet below and email to sustainability@leeds.ac.uk, or post in the internal post to Sustainability Service, Facilities Directorate Building, Cloberry Street, Leeds, LS2 9BT. We will post the results of the survey on our website later in the spring.

Our Environmental Management System (EMS) is externally accredited to ISO 14001: 2015 (click here to view our certificate) and supports our Environmental Policy. It includes all activities conducted on the city campus, on our residential sites and sports and conferencing facilities. Our Environmental Policy ensures we remain committed to conducting our activities and operations in an environmentally responsible manner to reflect best environmental practice. A training module is available to all staff and can be accessed here.

Accessing EMS documentation

All EMS operational documentation can be downloaded by following the links below:

EMS documents (including system documents) are stored electronically on a system called EQMS. To access this, please follow the instructions here. They explain how to access and use the EQMS software. Using your usual university login details, you can log into the system here. If you have any problems with using the EQMS system, please email sustainability@leeds.ac.uk

Once in the system the EMS documentation is available on the left of the screen via the document tree. Essential documentation is within the Environmental Management System folder.

To see all of our Standards, visit our Policies and Standards page here

Training

A general overview of the EMS is now available on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and should be completed by all University Staff. The training module can be accessed here.

The University of Leeds has constantly improved recycling rates through innovative contracts and creative methods of engaging with our staff and student population.

Our waste & recycling contract with AWM is set up for the majority of waste and recycling services at the University. Our segregated recycling has remained at 40% over the last 6 years and the contract has set performance KPIs to increase segregated recycling from 40 – 60% over a 3-year period. Due to the way that the recycling industry works, we need to ensure that our bins contain the correct recyclates. The text and image below explain exactly what must go into each bin and what can’t go into those bins:

Paper and card – we ask not to put corrugated card or coffee cups into this bin. It contaminates the waste stream and makes recovery very difficult

Plastics – We recycle plastic types 1, 2 and 4. Please don’t put Tetra Pak, crisp packets or thin plastic films into this bin as they are usually made of composite (bonded) materials which are practically impossible to separate. They should be disposed via the general waste bins.

Glass – Most glass is accepted, but please remember not to put Pyrex (microwave dishes, etc.) into this bin.

Metals – Most metals are fine in this bin, with the exception of aerosols. The legislation has changed and these should be disposed of as hazardous waste. Please use the general waste bins for these as we have agreed with AWM to recover them and dispose on our behalf in line with regulatory requirements.

Food – Please don’t add compostable cups, dishes, cutlery, etc. including wooden items. Food goes to Anaerobic Digestion rather than to compost, so any non-food material is removed and sent for Waste to Energy Recovery. Please put compostable materials into the general waste bins.

General waste – Consider whether it can go into the other bins first and only do is as a last resort.

Finally, if you have a particular type of material, or it is too large for the bins, always ask yourself if you can reuse first locally, or using the reuse@leeds system to reuse across the University. If not, you can check our A-Z here to find the material and guidance. If you have any questions or need any further guidance, please contact sustainability@leeds.ac.uk

With annual purchasing expenditure around £140 million, we can have a significant positive impact via the choices we make around purchasing at the University. We work closely with our purchasing team to identify opportunities and manage key impacts. We ensure that sustainability is included in the assessment of all University contracts and when there is high risk or potential opportunity the service works with contract managers to find ways to incorporate sustainability into the ITT and specification.

Of course, when dealing with large companies, framework contracts, or specialised equipment there can be severe limitation of what we can achieve by ourselves. As a result we actively work with colleagues in our local purchasing consortia and seek to develop partnerships that can help with our key challenges. Our recent sign up to Electronics Watch is an example of how we are working in partnership with EU buyers and Electronics Watch with the aim of having a positive influence on labour issues associated with the electronics industry.

We are a Fair Trade University and seek to continuously identify new opportunities to increase ethical purchasing. We are in the process of providing Fair Wear accredited Fairtrade Uniforms for all staff and we would love to hear any more ideas you might have.

Over the next 5 months we will be working in collaboration with our purchasing team to achieve level 4 of the Flexible Framework with the aim of standardising our systems and truly embedding sustainability into our purchasing.